Yesterday People
by Monotonehell
Summary: At 32 Adam wonders where his life is going when he stumbles on a boy with talents as remarkable as his own. Knowledge of the Tomorrow People is not needed to enjoy this story but there's plenty of things to please fans.
1. Prologue: Evolution

**Yesterday People**

_Thanks to Jill, Rhea and Cath for your help._

* * *

Evolution.

It's a marvellous process, very hit and miss, mostly miss.

For example, suppose that you're one of many creatures, all living in a cave. This cave is deep underground. So deep that no light reaches it. Now let us suppose that a few of your number have developed light sensitive cells on their foreheads. A completely useless trait in your pitch black environment.

Now let us suppose that, through some happenstance, light is introduced into your cave. Whether that be by an external influence or by some other event is not important to our example. The important point is, those who can see now have a potential advantage.

But there's the catch; this potential will only become an advantage if their reactions to and comprehensions of their world can be informed by this new sense. Otherwise it would be as useful as schizophrenia to a bus driver.

If.

If the gods of evolution are kind enough to provide the light - a lighthouse, a beacon in the dark. Then, given this new sense of orientation, a being's comprehension of their world would be greater. Their horizons would be expanded.

Where would that leave the rest of us, all pawing about in the dark?


	2. Yesterday People

Somewhere in the South Pacific, on a tiny uncharted sand island, a parakeet blown far from her natural habitat by a freak storm, gratefully alighted on a palm tree. She was cold, hungry and totally fatigued.

A bright flash of light caught her attention. She was further shocked to see a large lump of metal appear at the flash of light's source before gravity took hold and pulled it to the sand with a wet thud.

Sensing that things weren't quite right on this island, she flew ten metres away to what seemed a safer palm tree and rested there.

She managed a modest living on the island and after several weeks became used to the occasional piece of metal appearing from nowhere. They always appeared in the same place, so she simply kept away.

* * *

He woke.

He raised a hand to his head and softly pawed at the bandages there. Once he realised what the irritation on his forehead was, he stopped and moaned slightly as his eyes tried to focus on something, anything.

"Where am I?" he asked the blur before him, in case it was sentient.

"You're quite safe. You're in a hospital, but you're all right," spoke a patronising Irish woman's voice.

"What happen..." he began. He started to remember, but then - pain.

"You are seeing the troubles, aren't you?" said the voice again, "Time to go back to sleep, my dear."

She adjusted an intravenous drip above his head.

He slept.

* * *

"There it was again."

"Huh?" was the sleepy half-response from under a men's magazine.

"Didn't you feel it that time? - pain. It was stronger, but... I don't know... kind of blurry, like a memory of pain."

Gravity tugged at the magazine and it slid aside to reveal a pair of sleepy blue eyes, "What are you talking about? I didn't hear anything."

"I said _feel_," Adam leapt down from the top of the bunk bed to confront his friend face on, "I _felt_ pain."

"Well take two aspirin and call me in the morning. I'm sleeping. Work... morning..." He rolled away from the irritation, onto his side.

"Not my pain. I felt someone else's pain. Or at least I felt the concept of pain. I don't know, it's hard to describe." Light snoring was the only response. "Oh well, I guess we can talk in the morning."

Smiling at the sight of his snoring friend, Adam removed the magazine that was still partly covering Duke's cropped red hair and threw it on to a side table. He'd known Duke since they were in their teens, the red-head's character hadn't changed all that much since then. Still loyal to a fault. Still a big kid. Still obsessed with B-grade science fiction and horror. Still his closest friend, his only friend.

Adam climbed back onto the top bunk and lay on his back noting the random stains on the ceiling.

'Bunk beds, how juvenile. Guys around thirty should have double beds, and single rooms... and possibly girlfriends,' he thought to himself.

The bunk beds were a necessity in such a small room, and sharing one room was a necessity in such a small place. A girlfriend might be a nice idea, he hadn't had much luck there. He was a very attractive guy; tall, fit, a kind handsome face, short brown hair, but something about him seemed to put girls off. Just making regular friends seemed difficult. Duke was the only person with whom he had managed to have any kind of personal relationship.

He missed the Ship.

It was only the fact that his best friend also inhabited this cramped bed-sit that kept him here, gave him any sense of home or family. He and Duke were _Different_, he could never consider anyone else true family. There had been four others, but they had each decided that they didn't want to be different.

Adam thought at the light switch across the room and the light turned off.

* * *

"You're amazing you."

"Umm... thanks?"

"So... how do you do it Adam?" The waitress lent across the counter conspiratorially, as she did her long black hair dipped into a tiny bowl of brown sauce.

"Uh Mary... your hair..." Adam suggested as he threw her a clean dishcloth, thankful for the distraction from the question.

Adam yawned - late nights and early starts weren't a good idea. Especially for a short order cook working around hot grills and sharp knives. He slipped some extra crisp bacon onto fried potatoes and drizzled a little maple syrup over it. Just the way the Canadian on table four liked it. Mostly unheard of in a usual London caff. But with Adam at the helm this wasn't a usual London caff.

"Oh... cheers." Mary picked up the cloth and wiped the sauce from her hair. She picked up an order of bacon and eggs and flew over to a waiting table.

"Well?" She was back. Her hair didn't find sauce this time and she expected an answer.

"Well what?" he deflected.

Now that it was obvious that he was avoiding the issue, annoyance crept into her voice. "Look I won't let on. Just tell me how you make every breakfast for every customer _exactly_ the way they like it, even when you've never met them before, and how you seem to start their order before I even give it to you?"

He piled a disgusting amount of baked beans over some extra buttery toast, sliced black pudding and sausages on top, not under the beans, for the cabby on table seven.

"Well, like George here. He comes in most mornings. So I know how he likes his sausage and beans," he offered.

She wasn't impressed, so he tried, "Okay, look, I'm just very good at reading people. I notice things. I pay attention." He thrust the plate dismissively at her face.

She glared as she took it. "All right. If you don't want to tell me, just say so," she said and huffed off to deliver today's instalment on George's future coronary.

The breakfast shift was nearing an end. Adam's boss walked into the kitchen to start the lunch shift, he grunted a good morning.

"Morning Boss," Adam chirped.

"Indeed." He surveyed the tables of cattle happily chewing their cud. "Happy customers? Repeat business? Good food? Look Adam I don't know the way you Australians do it, but this isn't how you're supposed to run a greasy spoon in London." He shook his head.

"No Boss, I'll try less hard in future," Adam joined in the sarcasm.

"There's a good man."

* * *

The clock radio fell to the floor due to Duke's attempt to find it by groping randomly from beneath his bed covers.

The fall caused it to play the BBC Radio Two Saturday morning show, slightly off station. "..._a man from California has been charged with smuggling endangered iguanas into the United States inside his false leg_..." the news announcer fuzzed. Duke groaned and eventually emerged from his bed.

"Adam, why did you keep me up so late?" he complained to no one, "more to the point, why do you keep yourself up so late? You had to open for breakfast downstairs."

"..._BBC news. Three minutes past ten. Our next at eleven,_" the announcer continued, followed by an awful jingle foreshadowing the Jonathan Ross show.

He found his slippers and padded off to the tiny shared space that contained the shower, basin and toilet. Emerging with a toothbrush in his mouth and an electric razor to his face, he walked past the stacks of boxes that contained supplies for the restaurant downstairs, and across to a small clearing amongst the boxes. He sat at a small desk just above the stairs that had his computer balanced on it to check his email.

Past his toothbrush he mockingly said, "I feel pain," in a bad imitation of an Australian accent.

"Well I feel... hunger actually."

* * *

"...but don't you ever think that this wasn't supposed to be our lives, Duke?" Adam proposed glumly.

"What do you mean? You think you were switched at birth or something?"

As they sat at a rear table in the now mostly empty caff, over coffee and breakfast, Three Ten's 'Stop the World (I want to get off)' played faintly on the radio.

"Come on, you know what we are, what we can do. When we were kids, this wasn't the life I imagined." Adam toyed with a salt shaker and some spilt coffee on the table top, making patterns.

"Me either, but one thing I don't miss is the running away from government agents trying to kidnap us, or worse."

"Yeah well, there was that," Adam admitted.

"You know, there might be something to this being switched at birth stuff."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, there's been a family of ding bats trying to raise a human for thirty-one years somewhere back in Australia," Duke joked.

This shook Adam out of his despondency. "You know, you'd think I'd be sick of your crap jokes by now."

"Yeah sure, you know you love it. Why else would you stick with me for nearly fifteen years? Damn masochist, that's what you are," Duke retorted.

This exchange, and ones like it, had become almost ritual.

Mary walked past the table on her way out. "Adam," she feigned that she was calling to him in the kitchen, "your Yank boyfriend is here."

"Yeah, yeah, Mary I never get tired of that one. See you tomorrow," Duke glibly said in her wake, "what has she got against me anyways?"

"Dunno."

"Just crazy I guess," Duke said as he flashed Adam his contagious blue-eyed smile.

"Yeah, and nosey," Adam smiled back. He was thankful for Duke's friendship.

"What do you mean?" Red eyebrows furrowed.

"Well... she's been asking questions," Adam mumbled as his attention went back to the salt shaker.

"About what?"

"About how I get orders up so quick."

"I keep telling you to cool it on the precognitive breakfasts. It's dangerous! We gotta lay low."

"I can't help it. It just comes naturally. Before I realise it I'm making someone's order before they sit down. Besides the boss loves me."

"The Boss loves the money you pull in. If it wasn't for the rent free hovel upstairs... and your toast, I'd be out of here quicker than... than..." he searched for an amusing metaphor but failed, "you kept me up too late - coffee me, grill jockey! I need to get some work done on annoying-client-dot-com's website."

Adam stepped over to the counter to grab the filter coffee pot as he said, "You've been online since before I knew there was an online." He poured the bitter black liquid into Duke's cup, "So why aren't you a dot com billionaire already?"

"I... _we_ just don't have that killer instinct for business, you know that. You do make good toast you know."

"Thanks. Let's get married."

"I thought we already were."

Ritual.

* * *

His hand ran along the grey rusty metal of an internal wall of the Ship. He always felt safe and at home here. He stepped over a threshold between compartments and lay back on the rugs in his alcove. The rhythmic and calming omn sound of the Ship gently sent him to sleep.

'Adam! Wake up! The Ship's sinking!' a screaming in his head woke him from his snooze.

'How can the Ship sink? It's beached on an island,' he thought. But the whole hull was moving and groaning under some unseen stress. An ancient ceiling panel fell from above. Sand was raining from splitting seams above him. Salt water was trickling in through a crack in an underwater observation window. He had to get out. He felt hands on his shoulders...

"Adam! Wake up!" he heard.

Adam woke. Duke was standing over him looking concerned, shaking him gently awake by his shoulders. "You woke me. Were you having the nightmare again?" Duke asked.

Adam shivered as he answered, "Yeah, the Ship was sinking. I miss the Ship."

"So do I, buddy. So do I. Let's try to get back to sleep okay? You have to open for breakfast in the morning."

"Yeah."

* * *

Years ago, three teenagers stood on the beach of a small South Pacific island looking at the depression in the sand that once was the entrance to their Ship. Adam was in tears.

The young girl was also in tears, "What happened? Adam, what do we do? Is it... okay?"

"I don't know Jade. I think it finally collapsed under the weight of sand. There must have been another earthquake. I'm going to go back in there to see."

The red-headed boy grabbed Adam and protested, "No way, it's too dangerous. You saw, the whole thing just collapsed. I barely got you out before we were pancakes." He rubbed his bruised arm.

"But we have to know, Megabyte. It's one of Us," Adam said but didn't resist.

"I... I can't feel it any more," Jade said solemnly.

"Neither can I," Adam said.

As the three stood on the beach, Megabyte kept hold of Adam and Adam held Jade's hand. They just stared blankly at what had been. They had never felt this lost before.

After almost an hour Jade broke the silence, "I'm going home. Promise me you wont try to get back in, Adam."

She released Adam's hand, stood aside from the others and disappeared in a flash of light.

"We should go home too," Megabyte suggested.

Adam pushed him away, his nostrils flared in a brief fit of anger and cried, "That _was_ my home!" Anger never lasted more than a few seconds with Adam. It drained away, he fell to his knees and sobbed.

"I know. It was my home too. I meant we should go to my Dad's house. You should come. You shouldn't be alone - you know Dad thinks of you as his adopted son?" Megabyte gently put his hand on Adam's shoulder, "Okay?... bro?" he ventured.

Adam looked into his friend's blue eyes and just nodded. They both vanished in a flash of light.

* * *

Duke sat across from Adam in the caff, another morning, more toast.

"I'm going to pop over to Vermont and see Dad this afternoon. Do you want to come? He'd love to see you," Duke asked hopefully.

"Is he still living in Burlington?" Adam avoided the direct question.

"Nah, he finally quit his stupid job and moved back to Montpelier, to be closer to Millie."

"How is your sister?"

"How would I know? We never really speak."

The conversation was going nowhere, Duke knew it.

"Well I'm going this evening, for lunch at his place," he said, accounting for the time difference between England and the United States, "please come."

Duke wandered back upstairs to his work, leaving Adam alone with his thoughts.

Duke's toast crumbs fell into the tray Adam held at the side of the table as he wiped it down with a cloth. He placed the plates and cups on the crumbs and took them back into the kitchen to wash the breakfast dishes before the lunch crowd once again dirtied them. While he was stacking the clean white plates he decided he'd go for a walk. Somewhere nice, green, a park would be good. Somewhere to clear his head. He decided to go to Sydney Harbour National Park.

He hadn't been there since he was a kid. It would be good to get back to Australia for a bit. The smell of eucalyptus always calmed him down - a reminder of his childhood. Perhaps he'd go for a surf, he mused. He let his left hand run up to the rough skin above his right hip - a scar from a shark attack. Perhaps not, he hadn't surfed since that incident.

Walking up the stairs to find some clothes appropriate for the park he remembered the pain of the shark bite. He let his hand run to the spot again, his right hand up to his left shoulder... no that wasn't right. The shark had hit him on the torso. This wasn't his pain.

He stopped on the stairs. He concentrated. It was difficult, he hadn't done this in a long time.

Where was the pain?

Shoulder.

No, who was the pain coming from?

He reached out with his mind, feeling his way through the space between space until he was with the source.

* * *

Adam's boss mounted the stairs. When he reached the top he nodded hello to Duke who was tapping away at his computer. The man picked up a box of canned tomatoes and asked "Hey Duke, could you ask Adam to order us some more of these?" He tapped the side of the box with his thumb as he held it up to Duke.

"Tell him yourself, he'd be downstairs washing up about now."

"He's finished the dishes, I followed him up here."

"Oh... right. I must have been zoned out on my web pages here. Um..." he reached out with his mind and turned on the shower in the next room, "Oh right, he's in the shower. I'll let him know when he gets out." He waved a pad of yellow post-it notes, "I'll stick one of these bad boys on my monitor so I won't forget."

* * *

Adam stood in what looked to him like a private hospital ward. It had all the tell tale signs. An adjustable bed stood in the centre of the room, white hospital-corner sheets tucked in neatly, a utilitarian headboard with electrical and oxygen outlets above it, one of those stupidly tiny side cupboards with no room to fit anything useful to one side of the bed, and a bowl of grapes. There was also one of those machines that went 'ping'.

What really gave it away, however, was the patient lying on the bed hooked up to both the machine and an intravenous drip.

He was a boy, around fifteen. His closed eyes fluttered with what looked like R.E.M. sleep. He was half dreaming, half conscious. Adam stood at the end of the bed, eavesdropping on the boy's thoughts - a dirt road, riding a bike very quickly, a country lane, hedgerows appearing in a green speed blur, a dog running beside, a corner, a car, and pain.

Adam winced, rubbed his left shoulder. He noticed the bruising on the boy's left shoulder, the bandages across his forehead. The boy was definitely the source. But this boy's thoughts should not be this strong. Where was he? A notice pinned to the wall was headed "Cork University Hospital". Adam reasoned that he must be in Southern Ireland.

Picking up what people want for breakfast across a room was one thing, but all the way across Saint George's Channel? He and Duke could broadcast their thoughts to each other a world away, but normal people... unless... couldn't be...

Adam's thoughts were interrupted. The boy had cried out, but not in his mind this time. He was awake. His eyes were open, he was looking toward Adam, but not at Adam. It was as if he was trying to see around a corner by look straight ahead. He cocked his head to one side a little and strained to make his eyes see something that apparently wasn't there.

He reached out and grabbed at air. "I can't.. get it," he said weakly.

Adam walked to his side, and put a reassuring hand on the boy's upper arm. The boy calmed, and went back to sleep. There was a voice outside the doorway, an Irish woman's voice.

"Oh dear, is he awake again?" the nurse said as she walked through the door, "poor mite. No more morphine, or he'll be getting a habit from it. That's for certain."

She looked around the room, confused.

"Now I felt sure there was someone here with you just now... You be wary young Lorcan, if you're visited by a red haired Korrigan don't be falling in love with her no matter how pretty she looks. She'll kill you as soon as look at you if you do."

She laughed at her own superstition, she knew full well that there were no such things as Fairies, Leprechaun and Korrigan. Despite what her crotchety old grandmother had told her as a child.

* * *

Duke scowled at the computer before him.

"Come on you stupid thing, upload this web site. Don't make me come in there with you and do it myself. Man, I hate dial-up."

He saw a flash of light, and felt the sonic pop of a body suddenly coming into existence and displacing the air behind him. "Adam, your boss wants you to order some stuff, but you'll have to wait until I'm done with the phone line," he casually said.

"Duke, I think I've got a break out," Adam said excitedly.

"Yeah right. Dude, you're thirty-one. You haven't had a pimple for like, ten years. Come to think of it, I don't ever remember you with a pimple."

"No you idiot. I mean, one of us is breaking out. A new one of us... Why's the shower running?"

Duke finally broke his concentration on his computer as the enormity of Adam's statement registered.

A revelation of this magnitude deserved a question of equal magnitude.

"Huh?" Duke asked.


	3. Looking back at tomorrow

Doctor Stewart drove his car into the lengthily and unimaginatively named _Cork University Hospital Medical Research Institutes's_ car park and cursed under his breath. Some 'bugger of a student' had parked in his space again. Still cursing under his breath he found somewhere to park and walked to his office building.

The fifty-something fumbled in his tweed jacket pocket for his security card and pushed it into a slot near the front door. Nothing happened. He pulled out the card and stared at it menacingly, daring it to be further disobedient. He wiped it against his jacket and forced it back in the slot, warning it "You'll be for it, if you don't co-operate." This time the glass doors slid open to admit him. He returned the card to his jacket pocket and swaggered in. Pleased at this his most recent personal victory over the security system that so often gave him trouble.

As he emerged from the stairwell on to the floor of his office he noticed that it had started to rain outside. He remembered how far he was forced to park from his building and that he had no umbrella. Using the card again, he operated the security device retrofitted to his office's old wooden door, returned the card to his jacket pocket and entered. His thoughts turned from the inconveniences of working around uncooperative security systems and adolescent university students, to the adolescent in his care.

"It's a baffling case, to be sure." Stewart muttered to himself.

The boy had suffered a nasty blow to the head and shoulder when his bike hit the car, but there wasn't any serious trauma that would cause him to constantly drop in and out of a near comatose state. Stewart had ordered every test he could think of, but they all came back negative. X-rays, CT scans, MRI scans, blood tests, virology, pathology all showed a supposedly healthy patient. He'd spoken at length about the case with his colleagues, who also specialised in coma research, all to no avail.

However, there was something that he'd never mentioned to anyone about the boy, simply because it wasn't an observable, measurable, scientific fact - something about this boy made the Doctor feel uneasy. He couldn't put a finger on what exactly it was, just a feeling. Nothing sinister, just something. Which was "utter poppycock" of course.

He sat at his desk and thumbed through some research an assistant had put together for him - Fourteen reported cases of youths suffering similar symptoms, all in the last decade or so, and in each case no apparent cause that could be diagnosed. In two of the cases the patients had died, but all the others had made a full recovery after some time and had returned to their lives.

What frustrated Stewart was that there wasn't any obvious commonality. Nothing of help anyway. Some, like Lorcan had experienced an accident, but only Lorcan had any head injuries. Most weren't doing anything out of the ordinary when they fell victim to the mystery illness.

"There may be no relationship between all these cases at all," Stewart reasoned.

He pushed the files aside and stood. He exchanged his tweed jacket for his white doctor's coat which was hanging on a coat rack in the corner of his office, and headed off to the ward.

* * *

"Uh! ...and who the hell might you two be?" Doctor Stewart challenged the two young men that he found hovering over Lorcan's bed.

The two looked surprised, as they hadn't heard the Doctor's approach.

"Oh, we're friends of..." Adam searched his mind for the boy's name and was surprised that he knew it, "...Lorcan's family. We just come to see how he's getting on. I'm Adam and this is Duke, and you are?" Adam decided that if he started asking questions the Doctor might believe his story.

Stewart thought he detected a hint of an Australian accent in Adam's voice. Even though Duke hadn't said anything as yet, Stewart had decided that he was Irish.

"My name is Doctor Stewart. But how'd you get in here? This building is secured. Or at least so I'm told," he complained.

Stewart was now more than ever convinced that the "dammed annoying" security system that had locked him out of his own building on three separate occasions, was useless at keeping actual trespassers out.

"The Nurse let us in," Duke offered, assuming that there was a nurse about who could take the fall, "Lorcan doesn't seem to be awake so I guess we'll come back some other time."

'Definitely not Irish,' Stewart thought to himself upon hearing Duke's whiny American accent. He didn't know what to do at this point. He wasn't used to dealing with strange intruders. He barely dealt with his own staff, only barking orders at them as required - more often via a memo than in person. His bed side manner was ideal for comatose patients.

As Adam and Duke slipped past the vacillating Doctor, Adam sent an excited thought to Duke's mind, 'We knew his name, he must be one of us. How else could we have known his name?'

'Okay, he might be,' Duke conceded, 'But right now we got to get out of here.'

'But what about Lorcan? Should we take him with us?' Adam wondered.

'If he's sick, hospital's the best place for him,' Duke thought back at Adam.

They moved quickly up the corridor and ducked into a small alcove.

'Okay buddy, time for us to do our disappearing act,' Duke insisted.

'Adam? Duke? Who are you?' The question entered their minds just as they slipped into the space between space.

Doctor Stewart had recovered from his indecision and set off down the corridor to confront the two intruders, but they were no where to be found. He turned back toward his office, he'd decided that he'd alert security from the phone in his office. He fumbled for his access card in his jacket pocket, but found that he was wearing his doctor's white coat. His jacket was where he'd left it, on the coat stand, in his office.

"Bugger."

* * *

"You heard it too, didn't you Duke?" Adam asked his friend.

"Yeah. I heard it," Duke allowed himself a smile. They hadn't encountered anyone else with their talents for over a decade. He glanced at the cracked clock radio next to his bed. "Crap, we're late for Dad's lunch. Are you coming?" Duke looked hopefully at Adam.

"No. I have some things I need to do," he said as he vanished in a flash of light and a pop.

"Mysterious as always," Duke complained to thin air. Not knowing where Adam was and why frustrated Duke. Adam had fallen off Duke's radar a lot in recent months. Being telepaths brought a kind of intimacy that others could not know. But Adam still managed to keep much to himself. Duke didn't like secrets. Or at least he didn't like secrets where he wasn't a co-conspirator.

* * *

Doctor Stewart had called security from the nurses' station and managed to get back into his office, but he hadn't mentioned the two strangers. He wasn't sure why he hadn't mentioned them, just a vague feeling told him not to - more poppycock. He started worrying about his mental health.

Sitting at his desk he turned on his computer and logged into the security video recording system that was set up throughout the building. He fiddled with the selections until he found the camera in Lorcan's room. A live feed showed the boy still asleep in his bed. Stewart switched to playback mode and slid the time line back a half hour. He could see himself leave the room. He slid it backwards to a few minutes hence. There were the two young men standing over Lorcan. What were they doing?

He went back still further to a position where the room was empty, apart from Lorcan, and let the video play. Momentarily there was a flash of light and the two men were there. He fumbled for the pause button, then slid it back to the same point and played it again. Then a third time, this time in slow motion. There was no doubt about it, unless there was a piece missing from the video stream, those two had just materialised out of thin air.

He stopped worrying about his mental health, no sense in worrying about that which was so obviously beyond repair. Besides it was getting late and the rain had eased. He set off for home.

* * *

The Doctor's office was dark, musky, wainscoted and crammed with research. There were files, charts, all manner of journals and reference books inserted at odd angles into, on top of and around bookshelves. Adam was glad to find that it wasn't further filled with the Doctor or anyone else. He'd taken a chance just appearing without first checking.

He stepped over to the desk on which, amongst many other things, sat a computer and some manilla folders. One had "Molony, Lorcan" written on its tag. He opened that folder and read the Doctor's notes;

"_The patient had been riding his bike along a country road when he had collided with a car_."

With a little discomfort, Adam was reminded of the memories he'd plucked from Lorcan's mind.

He read on;

"_Although his injuries had been serious, there was nothing to indicate that they were the cause of his current condition. Although the boy seems outwardly in good health, he constantly slips in and out of a near comatose state. When he wakes he seems very disoriented, he grabs at air apparently experiencing hallucinations. After a few moments of this, obviously in a state of distress, he is overcome and again becomes unconscious_..."

Adam turned the page over but his gaze slipped across to the other folder on the desk. He put down Lorcan's folder and opened the other. He scanned the printouts and photocopies from academic medical journals, casually at first but with growing manic concentration as the meaning of what he was reading dawned on him.

* * *

General Bill Damon (retired) sat at his lonely dining table. His daughter had just called him to say that she couldn't make lunch due to some work related matter, and his only son was over an hour late. He had also invited his wife although he didn't expect her to come. After the divorce she had done her best to remain estranged.

All he had wanted was a nice family lunch.

He cursed his former career for keeping him from being a proper father and husband. He blamed himself for how his son had turned out, no real career to speak of, slumming it with his equally aimless room mate. If only he'd been a better father to both boys, maybe they'd have attended college, gone on to better things. Regret is the most powerful of emotions.

As a father he had never been there for any of them, how could he expect any kind of attention now that his kids were all grown up? Especially from Marmaduke. When he was younger, the boy never hid his resentment for being forced to play second fiddle to the General's career.

Things changed at around age fourteen, when his Son and his career collided. Bill was in international scientific intelligence - cloak and dagger stuff, and his Son became... of interest to international scientific intelligence when he developed a talent for disappearing and reappearing all over the place.

Bill wondered if 'Junior' and his strange friends, Tomorrow People they called themselves back then, ever knew the full extent of what he had done in order to protect them. How he'd played the system, influenced things and arranged a few _incidents_ that he would rather forget being involved in, to make sure that those who would conspire to use his Son's talents to their own ends were thwarted. What father wouldn't commit dark acts to protect the fruit of his loins?

At that moment Duke popped into existence in the dining room with a flash of light.

"...fruit of my loins!" Bill exclaimed aloud, surprised from his private thoughts.

"Jesus Dad! That has to be the most disturbing thing you've ever said to me," Duke quipped as he placed his hand on the old man's shoulder.

"Sorry Marmaduke, I was off with the pixies just then. You're late by the way," he said as he twisted in his chair to face his son.

"Dad, it's just 'Duke' now."

"Ha! I remember when you wanted to be called 'Megabyte'," Bill said standing.

"Yeah, well I've had a few upgrades since then. Come here you old bastard," The two men embraced, "Now get off me and get lunch."

* * *

Adam tested the air valve of the underwater breathing apparatus he'd "borrowed" from an unsuspecting cave diving club. Air flowed to his satisfaction, so he turned off the air compressor. Sitting on a large rock on the South Pacific island's beach he gathered the cutting and wrenching tools he'd also liberated from various sources and placed them in the small sack tied to a belt he wore awkwardly around his board shorts.

Nervously he stood, feeling the sand crunch beneath the diving booties he wore. He turned on a light that was strapped to his arm, and well aware that he didn't really know if he had been doing things correctly or safely, he hugged the small air tank to his naked chest and concentrated on finding a position below the beach. He reached out with his mind and pulled himself from the beach, through the space between space, to a dark, water filled cavity.

The shock of suddenly being immersed in the cold water was like a punch to his stomach. He wrestled with his initial panicked reflexes and gained control. Diving in confined and dark spaces scared the crap out of him, but it was something he knew he must do.

He needed to find out.

He bit down on the mouthpiece and took an experimental breath of compressed air. With the aid of his light he looked around the distantly familiar space.

His hand ran along the grey rusty metal of an internal wall of the Ship. Sticky silt wafted up in his hand's wake, curling chaotically in the cone of light. He had always felt safe and at home here, but no longer. Not for over a decade.

He squeezed himself past fallen metal to what they had once considered to be the heart of the Ship. It was dead now, as it had been since the collapse. An earthquake, one of a series of earthquakes that had incrementally moved the Ship over centuries from the beach to the bottom of the island's lagoon, had finally defeated the hull's integrity.

Adam used a small hacksaw he had brought with him and started cutting his way through metal. He wasn't exactly sure how he was going to achieve it, but he was sure of his goal.

'Story of my life,' he thought to himself, 'make it up as I go along.'

After several minutes of sawing he lifted the large piece of metal that he'd freed. Then pushed it through the space between space, and out to the beach above him. Where it appeared, fell, landed with a wet thud onto the sand near several other pieces of debris that he'd removed over the past few months, and completely failed to surprise a parakeet sitting on a nearby palm.

After around sixteen of these short dives, he had finally cleared enough away to reach the core.

He gazed into the deep cavity he had just revealed. He turned off the light. Somewhere in the black he could see a dim yellow fluorescence. He probed out with his free hand to touch it, but he could not reach. He considered that perhaps he needed to remove more of the panelling.

Shifting the tank behind him and moving so he was side on to the cavity he reached in again, the tips of his fingers tingled with an eldrich energy. He pushed in deeper to make contact with it. As he did, blinding purple light snaked out of the dark and enveloped him. He was racked with pain and expelling bubbles of air from his nose and mouth, unable to do anything else, he let out an involuntary cry of distress with his mind.

* * *

Lorcan woke, he looked around the hospital room, the nightmares were still there, laid across his vision by his mind's eye.

The four walls of the room, which should denote its dimensions, lurched nauseatingly about. Extra planes seemed to intersect the usual reality, he cocked his head to one side, he could see a woman sitting in front of her desk, in a room through the floor below.

Around another impossible corner he could see his bedroom at home. His pride and joy, an acoustic guitar, lay across his bed. He reached out but could not grab it. He remembered how he enjoyed playing it, he imagined strumming the strings, they seemed to respond to his thought and sung an open chord.

He was becoming used to these visions, but still could not make sense of them. He rationalised that since he was in hospital, he was ill and therefore these visions were not real at all but some kind of hallucination.

His thoughts were broken by a panicked cry in his mind.

"Adam?" Someone he did not know, but somehow deep beneath his memories familiar to him. Adam's panicked thoughts and feelings cut through his own; fear and excruciating pain. Horrible feelings that made him press his palms to his ears in a vain attempt to stop them, but they did not abate.

After a moment he tentatively opened his senses to the barrage. A deep feeling of compassion welled up within him. He had to try to help.

But how?

He remembered the guitar, using his hands hadn't worked on that, instead he reached out with his mind to find the panic. He wrapped himself about it like an octopus's tentacles and willed Adam to be with him. It seemed mad, but what else could he do? The effort proved too much in his weakened state and he collapsed back into a deep sleep.

The nurse walked into the room to investigate the commotion she had heard, but found Lorcan asleep on the bed, clutching a wet leather belt to his chest.

* * *

A half a world away Duke also heard Adam's call.

"I have to go," was all the excuse he gave his father.

Within seconds he reached out with his mind to be by Adam's side, he was sure that he was prepared to face anything.

Shocked to find himself blind and underwater he panicked and struck out, he wasn't prepared for this. His hand made contact with something soft and fleshy. Almost instinctively he clung on and willed them both back to their London bedsit.

Adam and Duke lay sprawled in a tangled mess of face down bodies, diving gear, sea water and wet sand. Duke coughed water from his lungs and, remembering Adam, moved to check him. He was relieved to hear that Adam was also retching beneath him - still alive.

Adam's boss wandered in. "Adam, can you do the Monday shift..." he began but paused as he took in the sight on the floor, "Oh. Ah. I'll ah... come back later. When you're.. ah..."

He turned on his heel and moved quickly down the stairs. He'd always suspected that the two boys were more than 'just friends', but now he was sure. Although he wasn't completely certain what he had just walked in on and he really didn't want to know what the tank was for.

After the shock had worn off, Duke let out a nervous laugh. He rolled the small tank that was near him so he could read the label on its side, "_Cave Divers Australia - Don't forget the buddy system!_"

"Are you going to get off me?" Adam inquired from under Duke.

"Not until you tell me why the hell you seem to have taken up cave diving?" sudden concern struck Duke, "Oh no! Is who ever you were diving with okay?"

"I was alone," Adam admitted sheepishly.

"Don't forget the buddy system," Duke quoted ironically. His confused feelings of concern, anger, disappointment and curiosity combined into mild disgust, "I'm going to get out of these wet clothes and grab a shower. When I'm done you got some talking to do... _buddy_."

Duke stood and left a trail of sea water as he walked to the shower. Adam rolled onto his back and realised that he had somehow lost the belt around his waist.


	4. Try again tomorrow

General Bill Damon (retired) sat at his lonely dining table, toying with his fork and the remains of his family lunch. He put down his fork and lent back in his chair. He'd always been a busy man. His work demanded all his time, often the only sleep he got during operations was a quick ten minutes at his desk.

But now, retirement meant he had free time, time to sleep in a bed - and at night. He had no idea what to do with himself.

The phone rang, the shock almost sent him falling backwards in his chair. He recovered and answered the phone.

"Damon," he answered curtly, efficiently.

"How's retirement?" The voice was familiar to Bill, Frank his former right hand man.

"It's great, Frank. I have a lot of time to myself. I'm my own chief for once in my life."

"You're hating it, aren't you?"

"God yes, what am I supposed to do? Take up fishing?"

"I might have an answer for you there."

"All right... go ahead."

"The organisation's currently looking into some developments in theoretical physics. Have you heard of M-Theory or String Theory?"

Bill listened intently as Frank briefed him on how some wild theoretical physicists had managed to close the gap between theory and practical application.

XOXOXOXOXOX

Harry Dunart watched on a video monitor as his assistant prepared the experiment. Dunart was nervous, even though he'd replicated the results several times without fail in the past, this time he was being scrutinised by those who supplied his funding. He caught the scowling gaze of one of their number, a short man who appeared to be in his sixties with a look of disapproving impatience across his face.

"Not long now ladies and Gentlemen," Dunart assured the assembled military officials, "my assistant is initiating the transmission from the remote site."

His attention returned to the monitor, where his assistant was giving him a thumbs up, indicating that the link was established.

Dunart addressed those assembled, "What you're about to witness may not seem that remarkable. Indeed mankind has been sending messages via radio signals for around a century now," he slapped an open palm upon the video monitor.

"Here we can see an image of the remote site, transmitted to us via a secure radio link," he moved over to a rack of electronic gear.

"On the other hand, here we have an audio link to the remote site that has no physical, electro-magnetic or until now known connection," he held down a key on the apparatus,"Mister Watson, come here, I need you," he spoke into the microphone then released the key.

A voice came in reply, its timbre had a hauntingly strange echo to it, "Well Doctor Dunart, I could but it may take some time as I'm several thousand miles away." It was his assistant.

The joke was lost on those observing, they knew nothing of Alexander Graham Bell's accident that lead to the development of the telephone. All they knew was that they were witnessing the first device that could communicate instantly, across any distance. This was something of immense military value, a private communications channel that could not be jammed, overheard or which would not suffer from interference. It did this by sending its signals outside of our dimension.

They were pleased. The experiment was a complete success. The scowling gentleman was all feigned smiles as he crossed the floor of the lab to shake Dunart's hand.

"Well done Doctor, your funding is secure. How long until you can get this into production..." he was cut short by a strange noise followed by a young voice that came from the speakers.

"...Who are you?" A boy's voice, an Irish boy's voice.

"Is this some kind of joke Doctor?" The smile's temporary hold on the military man's face had been defeated by his scowl's counterstrike.

"I... I have no idea what that was," Dunart was visibly shaken as his mind raced with who or what that voice could be. He didn't fully understand the higher dimensions he was piercing. Could it be other researchers, aliens, ghosts!? At this point anything was possible.

"Doctor! I suggest you find out. If others are already using these channels then this project is no longer viable," he lied. What he meant was that if others were using it then it would be passed onto military surveillance to eavesdrop.

As if by some unspoken prompt the entire delegation moved to leave simultaneously. One of the other men passed a satellite phone to the scowl.

"Frank, we have a situation that needs looking into. Pull Damon out of retirement, this looks to be in his area of expertise." He ended the call and passed the phone back to his colleague.

XOXOXOXOXOX

Duke emerged from the shower towelling his short copper coloured hair and looked around, but Adam was no where to be seen. A feeling was rising with in him. Something he hadn't felt in a long time. There was a certain thrill associated with cheating death, with doing something slightly dangerous.

He pulled on some clean clothes and called to Adam with his mind.

'Here,' came Adam's reply.

Duke reached out for Adam's presence in the World until he was with him. They were on a beach, on the island in the South Pacific. Duke could see a pile of rusting metal behind a small canopy. Under the canopy was Adam's diving gear and other assorted tools. Adam himself, wearing only his board shorts, sat nearby on a large rock his arms wrapped about his legs, drawn up to his chest.

Duke sat next to his friend, placed a reassuring hand on Adam's shoulder, "Okay buddy, time to spill the beans. I know where we are, but what is all... this?" He gestured a wide arc with his hand indicating all the gear and debris. "What is it that you think you're doing down _there_?"

Adam looked up at Duke. He realised that he'd been a fool. He needn't have attempted this alone. If he'd told Duke his plans, Duke would be there by his side to help. Just as he had always been.

"I probably would have drowned down there," Adam started.

"Your point being?"

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

After a long pause, "It's still alive."

"What is?" Duke furrowed his brow and looked directly at Adam.

XOXOXOXOXOX

Frank fell back into his right hand man role within minutes. After all Bill was _The General_. Frank preferred that someone else made the big decisions. Besides, he got more sleep being second in charge.

Old times.

This is what he was good at. He'd arranged transport for Damon and had them both at the research facility early the next morning for a meeting with Doctor Dunart.

"Just what is it that you're doing here Doctor?" Bill was examining the rear of the Doctor's communication device.

At its centre was an enclosure consisting of a seemingly irregular tangle of metal forming a hyperboloid shape, inside which was suspended a clear plastic sphere which in turn contained tiny sensors and antennae. Many wires lead down from the base of the sphere darting off in all directions, before disappearing into the electronics of the rack.

Bill had a compulsion to fiddle with some of the parts, and would have if it wasn't for the small black and yellow sign warning of high energy and recommending not to touch.

"Pretty isn't it? It's the seemingly random shaped metal structure that does the actual work. All the electronics around it are simply there to monitor and inject the signals. The metal windings are tuned in a specific way that allows the entire structure to resonate with the higher dimensions."

"But what are we doing exactly? Put simply, we're exploring the higher dimensions, some people used to call it hyperspace. Right now we're shooting bits of matter, through these dimensions, back and forth from one place to another. Just microscopic particles of matter at this point, quite an improvement over photons. And because Heisenberg doesn't apply, that's let us piggyback a simple audio signal on them, a bit like Fessenden piggybacked an audio signal over the early Morse radio broadcasts," he laughed, "it's not like we're sending men to Mars or anything... yet. But one day... there's certainly the potential there."

Bill half smiled at Dunart and half furrowed his brow, "Let's just assume that I have no idea what you mean and start from there." This had been an issue with his work from the beginning. He often worked with people who had brilliant scientific minds. He on the other hand was, relatively speaking, an ignorant soldier.

"Right, okay," Dunart had spent most of his career as a lecturing researcher in various colleges and universities, so he was used to dumbing it down for the students, "we understand our world in three dimensions, yes?"

"You mean up, down, left and right, and so on?" Bill offered.

'Ten points that boy,' Dunart thought to himself sarcastically.

"Okay, we can move on the X, Y and Z axes. What if we take away the Z axis? Imagine that you were a being that exists only in the X and Y axes, a two dimensional character as it were." He moved over to a lab bench and placed a piece of paper on it. Then he spread a number of flat washers on the paper.

"Here we see our two dimensional beings all getting on with their lives in their flat world," he pushed the washers randomly about the page with his fingers.

"But what would happen if one of them, let's call him 'Bill', suddenly became aware of another dimension, the Z axis?" He picked up 'Bill' and held the washer above the page.

" 'Oh our respective gods', Bill's friends exclaim, 'where on Flat World has Bill disappeared to?' "

"Because, you see, as far as Bill's friends are concerned he has disappeared. For they can not perceive him in the third dimension," he placed 'Bill' back on the page a short distance from where he had first disappeared, "And now 'Bill' has reappeared. To his friends he disappeared from one place, and appeared in another. You can see what a sensation that would cause?"

Bill could.

XOXOXOXOXOX

'Cut there,' Duke thought at Adam as he indicated the last metal spoke that supported the Ship's core. Adam worked in the cramped underwater space cutting the soft metal with his hacksaw, taking the occasional breath from the regulator in his mouth. Duke patiently waited beside him in the dark water, also breathing through a regulator both of those connected to the small air tank. Despite the panic they felt, both struggled to keep their angst in the back of their minds. Their dangerously cobbled together air supply would have appalled any professional, or recreational, diver.

After several minutes of slow hacking he was through. The core fell sideways slightly. Duke reached out to steady it.

'NO! Don't touch it,' Adam warned. He knew first hand what making contact with the inner sphere meant.

'All right I got it,' Duke held the now free core by its twisted metal outer cage. He pushed it through the space between space along with himself and Adam. They stood on the beach above, gently placed the core on a flat rock and discarded the dive gear.

The outer metal cage which insulated the power within was like a tangled mess of flat wire. It had no regular structure, holes large enough to put a hand through coexisted with tight filigree-like structures. The whole thing had an organic feel, not so much engineered as grown, but as a whole it had a hyperbolic shape. The core itself was a tallow-white sphere suspended within the cage by several metal spokes that once connected to various parts in the Ship.

"Now what?" Duke asked Adam.

"I have no idea," was all Adam could offer at first, "we need to get it working again."

"How do we even know that it will work without the Ship?"

"I guess we don't. I just think that it will. That is I have a feeling that it will. We really need it to." What Adam meant was he had faith.

"So you understand ancient alien technology?" Duke asked rhetorically.

"No, and I'm sorry to say that I don't know somebody who does."

"Right," a look in Duke's eyes betrayed that his brain had just gone into gear, "But we might know somebody who knows somebody who does..."

XOXOXOXOXOX

Adam sat at Bill's lonely dining table. The Ship's vagrant core rested at its centre, looking like some post-modern centrepiece. Both he and Duke had sat around it on the beach for over an hour concentrating their thoughts on it. They listened intently for some tiny signal from it. They probed its form with their minds looking for something, anything to give them hope, but other than the surprisingly strong energy that was constantly being generated at its core, there was nothing.

Duke came down the stairs with a cordless phone to his ear. He dumped the phone on the table and sat opposite Adam, "He's not home and his cell phone is out of service," he held his hand up to the core and casually felt for signs of life.

"Where could he be that doesn't have cell coverage?"

Duke dropped his hand, "There's nothing here," he flashed Adam a mischievous grin, "there's one way we can find out where he is."

"What? Just go to him? That's a bit risky isn't it? He could be anywhere. Us suddenly appearing in a crowded shopping mall would be hard to explain away."

"Feel like living dangerously?" The mischievous grin grew wide on Duke's face.

"What's brought about this change of attitude?"

"I dunno, something you said a while back, about us not living the lives we were s'posed to. Back when we were kids, our life was a bit of a merry go round..."

"More like a roller coaster," Adam interrupted.

"Yeah okay, but help me out, there's a metaphor I'm trying to use here. Back, when we were kids, our life was like a merry go round. We had a shot at the brass ring, but we got off. I think we're getting a second chance here. I don't want to miss it this time."

Adam nodded, "Nice metaphor," he said slightly sarcastically. "But yeah I know what you mean. I had the same feeling. That's why I..." He indicated the core sitting on the table.

"So..?"

"Yeah. Let's do it."

XOXOXOXOXOX

Frank and Bill were driving back to their motel along a dark road after a long day of interviews at the research facility. A flash of light behind Frank startled him slightly, but he assumed it was just a flash of headlights from a car behind.

However a voice behind him couldn't be dismissed so easily.

"Frank? Dad I thought you were retired."

Frank failed to notice the approaching corner as he twisted to see who was suddenly behind him. The General's son and his friend were clearly sitting in the back of the Jeep where they clearly had not been sitting a moment ago.

"Um, Frank you might want to steer a tad to the right here," Bill suggested while pulling down on the wheel a little. Frank returned his attention to the road just in time to correct, over steer and re-correct before resuming a safe line down the road.

"General?" Frank was looking for some indication that he wasn't going crazy.

"Marm... ah Duke, you know better than... What are you? Fifteen again?"

"Sorry Dad I guess I wasn't thinking," Duke smirked at Adam and laughed.

Bill smiled at the reminder of Duke's teen years. He was always popping in and interrupting Bill's work. Then Bill would get angry and chase him off. Bill's attention returned to a still perplexed Frank.

"You know the boys. It's like this Frank, Duke and Adam... they have a unique talent."

"I'm listening," Frank prompted.

Adam supplied the answer, "We can disappear from one place and reappear in another. Been able to do it since we were kids."

"I see," was all Frank could manage as slowly, piece by piece, little unanswered mysteries from the past buried in the corners of his mind found answers.

"I'm amazed we managed to keep it from you," Duke pondered.

Frank slowed the Jeep and pulled into the motel's driveway.

"I think I need a drink."

XOXOXOXOXOX

Frank cradled a large scotch and ice in both hands as he sat on the bed in his motel room.

"So you're not some secret military experiment or something like that?"

"No," Adam turned his attention away from Duke who was in the process of raiding the mini bar, "we're totally natural."

"Yeah, no added chemicals," Duke quipped, "ugh cherry cola... I hate cherries," his head inside the refrigerator.

"We're just another in the long line of freaks that evolution pops out from time to time," Adam finished.

Frank looked at the glass in his hands, he hadn't touched a drop, he didn't drink scotch ordinarily. He swirled the ice clockwise in the glass, it made pleasant clinking noises.

"I always thought there was more to you two than just the General's boys, Frank admitted, "because you were often too deeply involved in some of our, how should I put it? _More interesting_ investigations, than a couple of kids should have been. But it wasn't my place to ask questions. I just followed orders."

He swirled the glass again, and raised it to his lips, but put it back down before saying, "That sounded terribly clichéd, didn't it?"

Duke extracted himself from the mini-bar with a packet of peanuts and a can of soda. "Oh, no. Not at all," he said sarcastically and opened the packet.

"But.. how?.." Frank half asked.

"We don't really understand it completely ourselves. It's like a sixth sense. We just feel our way through..." Adam struggled for the words to explain what was second nature to him.

"It's kinda like going through a door from one room to another," Duke took over as he offered the peanuts to Adam, "except that the rooms aren't physically next to each other, and the doors are everywhere... anywhere we want them to be."

Bill interrupted, "Sorry Frank, but you can get up to speed later. What I need to know is, what was so urgent than couldn't wait for a phone call?"

"There's been a couple of... developments and we thought you might be able to help us," Adam answered, "first, we've discovered another one of us. A young boy in Ireland is in the early stages of developing his abilities."

Bill was amazed, "Well that's great! It's been years since... You said a couple of developments?"

"We've recovered part of the Ship. We think it's the part that used to... talk to us... help us," Adam answered again.

"But that thing was destroyed years ago, under a tonne of sand and seawater," Bill was doubly amazed.

"We thought so too, but I've been... excavating and we found the core. It still has power, but it's not working."

Duke took a swig from his soda can, "Dad, we were wondering if you knew any scientist types who could take a look at it and help us. Long shot I know, but it would need to be someone we could trust."

Frank swirled the ice anticlockwise for variety as he mulled over what he had heard. A connection between two facts formed in his mind. He put down the untouched drink and looked up at Bill.

"Did they say an Irish boy? What Dunart's working on - the voice on the device, that was supposed to be Irish," he pushed the glass aside, subconsciously saying that he was finished with it.

Duke indicated the scotch, "Are you going to finish that?"

"No I don't actually drink, I just like to hold it."

"Well in that case..." Duke poured some of the cola from his can into the glass and knocked back a mouthful, "Don't look so surprised Dad, Adam's the one who doesn't drink."

XOXOXOXOXOX

Adam watched as Bill examined the strange object rested upon his dinning room table. Adam gently pulled back Bill's arm before Bill touched the tallow-white centre.

"Yeah, don't touch that part. It has a hell of a kick to it. I found out the hard way that it still has power."

"It looks so much like the device," Bill observed, mostly to himself.

"What device?" Adam asked.

"They've pulled me out of retirement to investigate the source of a transmission picked up by a new communication device. I don't really understand it myself, but it somehow transmits signals through the higher dimensions, bypassing our space," Bill laughed, "through hyperspace like in those old sci-fi shows you watch Duke. The thing is, the core of that device looks remarkably similar to this... thing. Your Irish friend, was he using this or something like it recently?"

"Lorcan's been no where near it. He's been spending most of his time unconscious on a hospital bed," a though struck Duke, "we should check on him and see if he's okay."

"I'd like to meet Lorcan, is it? But I'd also like to get Dunart to look at this."

Adam looked worried, "Can we trust him?"

"Well I'm not sure exactly, but we don't have to tell him where it came from. The thing is, he and his team are the only people that have any hope of understanding it."

"So you think he can fix it?"

"I think so, yes."

Adam mulled things over in his mind. Getting the beacon working was important for all the others like them to follow. Without it they would be lost like the kids in Stewart's folder.

Adam came to a decision, "It's worth the risk."

XOXOXOXOXOX

He lay awake, vaguely aware that it was sometime in the middle of the night, the lights were dim and there was no sun streaming in through the window. The patronising nurse who continued to talk to him even though he had never responded to her, was on duty.

He was becoming more skilled at separating what most people saw as reality, from the nightmares his head produced. He could see Adam and Duke... somewhere, or was that sense? They seemed thousands of miles away, but within reach. It occurred to him that they might currently be residing somewhere in the uncharted depths of his fevered mind. Perhaps he could bring them to the surface so he'd have someone to talk with. Then suddenly, Duke was with him, in the corner of the room.

"Hello Duke," Lorcan greeted his imaginings, he decided that he may as well enjoy his madness. No sense worrying himself to death about it, the doctors could do all the worrying for him.

"Hey buddy, you're awake. That's great."

"And why wouldn't I be? I couldn't exactly think you up when I'm asleep now could I?"

"I... ah... What?"

"Never mind. I'm bored and I can't sleep. What shall we talk about?"

"I just came to see if you're okay. There's some things you should know..."

Duke was interrupted by a scream of fright from the doorway, he turned to see the nurse wide eyed and pointing at him with a shaking hand.

"K...k..korigan! Red haired korigan!" was all she could manage before she fainted into a messy heap on the floor. Panicked voices and footsteps closed in from a distance.

"Um... we can talk some other time," Duke said to a bemused Lorcan, "I think it's time for me to leave."

XOXOXOXOXOX

The next morning, Frank drove Bill back into the research establishment, with the alien device concealed under a blanket on the back seat.

Dunart greeted the two men and eyed the blanket-swathed package with suspicion and curiosity.

"Well General, here we are, but I still don't know why I'm here."

"I have something for you to look at, Doctor. But you must understand that, due to security, I can't tell you where it came from."

"I'll never get used to this 'need to know' life you military types lead." He lent toward Bill conspiratorially, "Between you and I, it's not really my cup of tea. Do you know what I was working on before the military made me an offer I couldn't refuse? No? I'll tell you. I was convinced that my discovery's best application was non-stick cookware."

Bill was taken aback, "What? How could something as mind blowing as all this possibly be applied to cooking?"

"Well you see, at the time I'd worked out how to shift objects just a little out of phase with our own reality. The upshot of this was that they would behave fairly much normally, except that other objects could not bond with them on a molecular level. Sit an out of phase frying pan on a hotplate and the thing would get hot. Break and egg on the surface and it would fry and then slide right off. Do you know how much money you can make from late night infomercials?"

"I see," said Bill, not really seeing at all, "Frank would you do the honours?"

Frank carefully unwrapped the device, neatly folded the blanket and laid it beside.

Dunart walked around it twice, he looked to Bill questioningly.

"Look familiar?" Bill asked rhetorically, "as far as 'need to know' goes, you don't need to know where it came from. Only that we believe it's probably the source of the phantom transmission and that we want your opinion of it."

"Right," Dunart placed a knuckle to his lips, "I'll get to it then."

XOXOXOXOXOX

"Where did you say we were again?" Bill knew that they were in Cork, but he found being pushed between the cracks of reality by Adam or Duke more than disconcerting at times, he just needed some reassurance.

"That's the place," Adam pointed out the building that contained Lorcan's ward, "How do you want to do this? We'd need to make sure that his room is empty before we popped in."

"I've got a better idea, "Bill said as he slipped his satellite phone from his jacket, "time to test the roaming on this phone plan."

Bill had contacts with clout. With just two calls he managed to pull the right strings to get them all into the institute legitimately and with Doctor Stewart as a guide.

Stewart ushered the three into the ward.

"This way gentlemen," he flashed a sly wink at Adam and Duke, "of course you two already know the way."

His mind had worked subconsciously to fit what he had witnessed into his understanding of the World. He'd decided that the two men were spies of some sort, and that they'd attempted to edit the video surveillance to remove evidence of their visit. But that they'd made a mistake and left a few seconds of themselves in the recording. He was certain that there was no other way to explain their vanishing.

Their sudden arrival with all the credentials and military authority from on high cemented his belief.

"What you secret service types want with a fifteen year old boy is beyond me. But there he is."

"Can we talk to him?" Bill asked the Doctor.

"Probably not, he seems to be unconscious again. He slips in and out of this, and even when he seems awake the nurses haven't been able to get much sense from him. Some of the nurses have commented that there is something strange about his presence, nothing I've been able to put my finger on. Poppycock I say, although one of the poor dears has had to take some leave. Muttering something about disappearing mythical creatures and appearing leather belts."

"Wait... you might to be in luck. He seems to be waking up..."

XOXOXOXOXOX

He woke. He was aware of several people around him. Two of them he knew but didn't know, Adam whose presence put him at ease and Duke. The doctor and a nurse he'd seen before and someone new. But still cutting across all that were the nightmares.

A jumble of portals were open to his senses, all where they should not be. It was as if he could see everywhere at once. The space about him was folded and warped impossibly. Distant places he knew seemed to be at his fingertips, but weren't. Everything was confusing.

Except Adam and Duke.

They were points of reference, fraternity. Somehow they were like channel markers that guide ships into safe harbour. Somehow, in all the flux his world of senses had become, Adam and Duke were the only things that were certain.

That was, until suddenly, he became aware of another point of reference. A bright beacon amongst a confusing sea of images. A light that gave order to chaos. He felt compelled to go to it. He thought it to be part of his madness and wondered if he should deny it, but he gave in and subconsciously willed himself to be with it.

XOXOXOXOXOX

"This seems to be the last one," Dunart mumbled to himself as he watched the computer that controlled a remarkable machine of his own creation. Its purpose was to measure and adjust the complex patterns of windings of his communications device so that they resonated with the higher dimensions. Its subject this time, however, was the core that Adam and Duke had retrieved from the Ship.

Many tiny computer controlled robotic arms pulled and pushed at the soft metal structure with virtually imperceivable movements. They were arrayed in a ring that surrounded the core like many brass legs of some steampunk imagined millipede. The ring itself slid up and down the core casting a ruby sheen across the core's surface. The ruby red of lasers which were the machine's eyes.

The computer squawked a short monophonic rendition of _Dixie's Land_ indicating that the job was complete, the arms all retracted, and the ring descended to rest at the base.

He had decided that his next task would be to study any signals he could find emanating from the metal spokes that radiated from the central tallow-white sphere. If it was like his device, some would allow signals to be injected and others would allow received signals to be monitored.

He carefully removed the Ship's Core from the machine and placed it on a free lab bench. He thought at first that he was imagining things when it appeared that the core was glowing, but when he returned with electronic jumper leads and an oscilloscope, the core was emitting a lot of light.

"That shouldn't be..." was all he could say before a brilliant light flashed in his eyes. He stepped backward and raised his arms to cover his face. He looked on in shock as a figure appeared from nowhere two feet above his laboratory bench top before falling heavily onto it with a painful grunt.

The figure, flat on his back, groaned and lifted his head slightly until Dunart could see his face – the face of an angel. He raised himself up on his elbows and looked right at Dunart.

"Well that was a hell of a thing..." the angel said, with a heavy Irish accent, before laying back down and falling unconscious.

Dunart looked at the figure lying on his bench top and the device sitting next to him. It was still glowing a warm white light. He reached over to it and pinched a loop of the soft metal cage between his thumb and forefinger. He bent it slightly outwards, which he calculated was enough to detune it to the higher dimensions. - He did not understand what had happened here, but was sure that he didn't want it to continue happening.

The core's glow slowly diffused and it once again fell dark.

From a drawer he took a ball of red twine and a pair of scissors. He cut a short piece of the twine and tied it to the loop of metal he had bent out of shape for later reference.

His attention turned to the figure, who was wearing what seemed to be a hospital gown. The kind that barely hides its wearer's shame and affords brief views of their rear through its tie-closed back as they walk. Dunart could now see that his angel was a young male and apparently human.

Dunart reached out cautiously and checked for a pulse under the boy's chin, which he found - alive but sleeping. Putting two and two together lead Dunart to reason that this Irish voice was the same voice he had heard a few days earlier.

He reached for a nearby phone to summon some help.

XOXOXOXOXOX

Dunart looked as the three dimensional model of Lorcan's brain scan rotated on the video monitor. He cocked his head slightly as a pattern familiar to him appeared for a moment. Then he saw it a second time. Hidden amongst the irregular shapes that make up a brain he could see a structure. A structure that was only familiar to a handful of people on the planet. The same seemingly chaotic but mathematically precise pattern that made up the cage around his device laid over the structure of the boy's brain.

Lorcan walked unsteadily from the MRI, assisted by a technician. He had woken just as the scans were completed and assumed he was still in the hospital. Things seemed clearer to him now. The nightmare images were gone, up was up, down was down, but strangely he still had a sense of the other in the back of his mind.

The doctors must have cured him, he thought.

He sat on a chair at the edge of the room as the medical technicians explained their findings.

"...we can find nothing unusual in all our scans. He does show some signs of a little trauma consistent with a minor traffic accident. But as far as we can see he has a clean bill of health."

"So you gave me the cure then did you Doc?" Lorcan smiled sweetly from his isolated chair, "When will I be going home?"

The entire room's occupants turned to look at him. He noticed for the first time at least two men in military uniform, and realised that all the voices he had heard had been American. Things started to feel wrong to him.

His smile vanished, "Wha?" he half said, as if there was a joke he wasn't in on.

"Young man," one of the military types said, "you can consider yourself under arrest until such time as you tell us who you are, who you work for, and what you know."

"My name is Lorcan. I don't have a job, I go to school. I don't even deliver papers. I was in hospital, after an accident. What am I under arrest for? Who are you guys?"

Lorcan saw the open door and a chance, he sprung out of the chair energised by fear and bolted out the door. Out in the corridor he had two choices, he chose right. As he rounded a corner he ran directly into a short stocky man.

The man scowled at him, "You must be the young man of whom I've heard so much about. Well seeing as you're now up, we should show you to your room."

Short stocky and very strong, Lorcan struggled for a moment but the man had a firm grip. He frog marched Lorcan down two or three corridors and into a small cell, threw him to the floor and locked the door on his way back out.

Lorcan lay stunned, on the floor where he fell.

XOXOXOXOXOX

"Where would he have gone?" Bill sat at his dining room table, this time not alone.

Adam was half pacing behind Bill's chair flitting in and out of his periphery putting him on edge.

"Adam! Any ideas?" Bill stood to face him.

The exclamation snapped Adam from his funk. "I have no idea, we always used to go to the Ship the first time. It seemed to pull us to it."

"Yeah and because most of it was at the bottom of a lagoon, we'd end up in the water," Duke threw his hands upward for emphasis, "splash!"

"But with no Ship to guide him, what then?" Bill looked first to Duke then Adam.

"It'd be somewhere that he had a connection with, his home, a favourite place..."

"Somewhere that feels safe," Duke suggested.

"But not knowing much about our boy we can't even guess. The doctor at the hospital in Ireland gave me a copy of his files," Bill opened his briefcase, "his home address is in here, we can start there - Ballin...hassig?"

XOXOXOXOXOX

Mrs Molony absently put down the phone's handset to rest in its cradle.

First the accident, then nearly two weeks in hospital, then the mystery illness that left him uncommunicative and now the hospital had lost her son. She couldn't believe so much misfortune could happen to the same family. She was in shock. A strong cup of tea, that's what she needed.

She filled the kettle with water and turned it on to boil, as she took a teabag from a canister she started to sob but suppressed the emotion when she heard a knock at the door – Lorcan?

She opened the door to find a handsome middle aged man flanked by two younger men.

"Oh," she couldn't help looking slightly crestfallen, "can I help you?"

"Mrs Molony?" the older one inquired, she nodded, "We're here about your son. We think it's possible that he may come back here."

"I... er... I've only just heard myself. The hospital called me just now... come in please."

"I'm sorry, I assumed they would have informed you earlier."

Duke and Bill left Adam to comfort Lorcan's mother, while they investigated what she had told them was one of his favourite places – a nineteenth century folly nearby. They walked back up the short driveway of the country cottage, turned left as they had been directed and followed the hedgerow to a small thicket that obscured a shallow valley. They found a way through the fence and down through the dense vegetation until suddenly they came across a stone wall.

It was a rough copy of a grotesque Gothic-styled castle, complete with a two stage tower and an oriel that opened to the first story over a coach arch; but all in miniature. It stood roughly the same height as the trees around it which completely obscured it.

"I can see why Lorcan would like this place," the child in Duke was telling him that the folly was 'way cool.'

Bill found a door leading to a narrow staircase behind one side of the man-high coach arch. They climbed the stairs, their legs occasionally brushing against the limestone walls.

"Wow, T.A.R.D.I.S." Duke exclaimed at the large space when he emerged above the slate floor.

"Tar what?" asked Bill.

"Never mind, dad. I just mean it looks bigger on the inside than out," Duke looked out the small oriel but the only view it afforded him was of a tree within touching distance.

'He's not here either,' Duke thought at Adam, 'you should see this place, it's... way cool.'

A flash of light and a pop announced Adam's arrival.

"What now?" Adam asked as he looked around the large space.

Bill was looking through some things on a small alcove in the wall, obviously Lorcan's stash.

"Can't you guys get hold of him telepathically?" Bill had said one of the taboo words out loud.

Many years ago they had all agreed to use metaphor when talking out loud about their abilities. When they were teenagers they threw words like telepath, teleport and telekinesis around carelessly. These days they could never tell who might be listening.

"We can try," Adam turned to Duke.

Bill watched from what he decided was a safe distance, as both men held their hands out to each other, palms out, almost touching and closed their eyes in concentration.

XOXOXOXOXOX

He Woke.

The nightmares weren't there any more, but he could still sense them. Still somewhere in his mind, if he cared to reach out to them, were places where the universe seemed to fold in upon itself.

That was nothing compared to the nightmare reality was presenting to him now. He was cold, hungry and above all frightened. Although what he had been experiencing for the past few weeks was troubling, he was able, on some level, to enjoy it. He knew he was in safe hands, the doctors and nurses were there to look out for his welfare.

Here the doctors and the guards seemed to bare him actual malice. He only wished he knew what they thought he knew so he could tell them.

It occurred to him that all this might be his madness gone... mad... er. Perhaps he only imagined that he was locked in a small white cell, with nothing but a padded bench and an open toilet for furniture. It didn't make sense, he was just a kid, not some kind of terrorist.

He wasn't even sure how he got here.

He regretted giving into his madness, he should have fought against it. Now he was in deeper and he couldn't find reality at all. He knew the hospital and its nurses and doctors must be out there somewhere. He knew he was lying on a hospital bed, with starchy white sheets and the smell of disinfectant.

Adam and Duke were calling to him again, from somewhere deep in his mind.

He ignored them, and then put up a mental block against them.

He had to get better.

XOXOXOXOXOX

"It's no use. He's blocking us," Duke was the first to break the link.

"Did you get anything? Something that might give us a clue as to where he is," Bill moved closer to the others from his corner.

"No. Nothing useful except..." Adam considered what it was that he had sensed.

"White... and a toilet... that can't be right," Duke tried to complete Adam's sentence.

"Yeah, that's it! But what does that mean?"

"I have no idea I'm sure," Bill put his hand on Adam's shoulder, "we tried. Now we need another plan."

"There's only one thing that could help now, the Ship's core, but that's still not working. We'd be able to sense it if it was."

Bill reached into his jacket for his satellite phone and called called Dunart who explained that he should return as soon as possible, that he had had success with the core, and that he had a number of concerns that he couldn't express over the phone.

"We need to get back to the U.S. right away. We have our other plan."

XOXOXOXOXOX

Bill pulled the Jeep onto the side of the road where he'd left Adam and Duke. They stepped out from the shade of an old oak tree. Bill just smiled, pointed to the blanket wrapped package in the passenger seat beside him and told them to get in.

XOXOXOXOXOX

The folly's cold stone walls already felt somehow warmer with the Ship's core set on a box in the centre of the room.

"I think it's best that none of us are here when Lorcan comes in, we might freak him out, let's just let him find us in his own time," Adam suggested, "you guys head downstairs and I'll follow as soon as I get it going."

Adam checked over his shoulder to see the copper colour hair of his friend sink below the slate floor and disappear. He pinched the metal loop that had a short piece of red twine tied to it between his fingers and closed his eyes.

"Well Bill, let's see if Dunart got it right or not."

He concentrated on the core before him, feeling his way into it with his mind. He gently applied pressure to the soft metal and waited.

Nothing.

He pushed again, with the minutest force he could manage and waited.

Something.

He felt the return of an old friend.

Emotion welled up within him as old feelings of safety and paternity emanated from the core. Overcome he, with difficulty, stood and headed down the stairs to join Duke and Bill.

Duke was standing under a tree, with his back to his father, ashamed to reveal the tear streak down one of his cheeks. He gave Adam a look that communicated that he felt it also.

Adam walked up to his friend and they embraced. Adam half broke the hug and moved to one side of Duke to watch the folly. Bill smiled to himself as he saw 'his' two boys with their arms over each others' shoulders.

"I never thought about it before," Duke's voice broke a little with emotion.

"About what?"

"When the core died... went silent," he corrected himself, "I knew I missed its presence, but I never realised that it had guided us so much."

"Neither did I really. Duke there's been many of us breaking out, all over the World. I read about it in Doctor Stewart's files. At first I went back to the Ship because I had nothing better to do. You could almost say that I was just trying to dig up some nostalgia. But. When I read those files, I realised that without the core we would never have realised our abilities. We need it. Whoever left it knew that. They left it for us and people like us."

"So what about these others? Will they break out now?"

"I wish I knew."


	5. Epilogue: Light tomorrow with today

"It's a bit of a boys club this, isn't it?" Lorcan trilled from the bottom of the step ladder.

Adam furrowed his brow, "What do you mean? Keep it steady, mate."

Adam was atop the ladder securing a bracket that now held the core to the ceiling of the folly.

"Well, I know that you two have each other, but I could do with a few girls around."

"We're not..." Adam caught himself mid-assumption, "what do you mean by that?"

"Oh nothing. Just making conversation."

Adam, satisfied that the structure was secure, descended the ladder and admired both his handy work and the sight of the core in its new permanent home.

"And what are we to do next?" Asked Lorcan.

"We wait," Adam answered.

"What for?"

"The Tomorrow People."

* * *

Some of the characters depicted above, and the concept of the Tomorrow People are the creation of Roger Price and are used without permission but with the greatest of respect and admiration. All other characters are the product of my fevered brow, I'm not going to say that anyone else is prohibited from using them in their own works as that would just be rude after borrowing Roger's. But please let me read them!


End file.
